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Cold Cases

 
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benn



Joined: 19 Sep 2002
Posts: 2136
Location: Sacramento, CA

PostPosted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 3:12 pm    Post subject: Cold Cases Reply with quote

http://www.dove-wa.org/Stephens%20Place/coldcases.htm

COLD CASE PAGES

VOLTAIRE:

" To the living we owe respect.

To the dead we owe the truth."

Back to DOVE Victim Page

The following pages are dedicated to the victims, families and friends of Washington State's hundreds of unsolved homicides.

THE LEGACY OF UNSOLVED HOMICIDES

by Richard W. Cress December 13, 1999

"WE HAVEN'T HAD A CASE WHERE SOMEBODY JUST CALLED US WITH A TIP" Joe Kennedy, NCIS Agent and Program Manager.

The cost of allowing any homicide to remain unsolved is a multi-faceted disaster. While the cost to the surviving families is highest, the continuing cost on society is also a very significant factor

According to the Rand Corporation nationally the average career criminal commits more than 180 crimes a year. We cannot expect that all of these 180 crimes will be homicides nor that the felon is or will become a career criminal. However, it is a safe assumption that once a felon has killed, the propensity to kill again is ever present if and when the opportunity or necessity arises.

The data we need to present a realistic case for a State Mandated Cold Case Homicide Task Force is extremely difficult to obtain. Fraught with double speak, governmental agencies are either unable or unwilling to share readily available information thus forcing us to make the most basic of assumptions.

We have extrapolated from available data, that there are approximately 1,140 unsolved homicides in Washington State [as of 1997]. For the sake of our presentation, assume the felons are still alive, active in the state, and not serving time for other crimes. From this extrapolation we can deduce that the offenders in these homicides could generate nearly 205,200 new crimes per year and it is a safe bet that the majority of these crimes will be major felony crimes and mostly violent.

Without adequate data and statistics we cannot apply any logical cost to these crimes but it must run into the millions of dollars annually. The cost in terms of victims and survivors however, is much greater. Victims and surviving familiesi will experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to varying degrees. This devastation is not only career ending in many cases, but insidiously, this disorder with its usually untreated high levels of stress causes damage or destruction to the human immune system. Once the victim/survivor's immune system is compromised, the way is open for further damage from ANY disease that happens to come along such as cancer, heart disease, hypertension, leukemia, alcoholism and any other available disease. This statement does not exclude forms of suicide either.

There are numerous reasons that homicides remain unsolved and thus become 'Cold Cases.' The most significant comes from an Internet report "Fatigued homicide detectives, rushing from one new crime scene to another, could not conduct any meaningful follow-up investigations, and unsolved cases piled up." A local County sheriff echoed these sentiments identifying a lack of manpower, time on case, and budgetary limitations as a major cause of Cold Cases in his county. In addition, homicide detectives in haste to move from one homicide to another, often miss important and significant information, clues, or leads.

Our research indicates that in areas of the nation that have established Cold Case Homicide Squads they are clearing old homicide cases successfully and reports of 50% or more are not uncommon. As a result of our extrapolation of 205,200 new crimes per year possible, a Cold Case Squad mandate in Washington State alone could prevent the commission of up to 102,600 new crimes not to mention solving so many Cold Cases in Washington State and delivering satisfaction to the surviving families and friends.

The solving of these cold cases however does not bring an end to the devastating trauma to the families of the victims but it does present at least a small satisfaction in the knowledge that they have learned most of what happened and perhaps why. After seventeen years I would be delighted with that contentment and the knowledge of knowing that justice, although inexcusably delayed has at long, long last been served.

My only possible conclusion comes from the text quoted as the subtitle of this document "We haven't had a case where somebody just called us with a tip.1" Unfortunately, that is exactly what most agencies wait for and that includes King County Washington where my son's file lays gathering dust. Without Cold Case Squads, homicides that can be solved are relegated to the dank file storage facilities of our nation's law enforcement agencies. Although as many as fifty percent are solvable, they are simply not important enough assign investigators to work on these old cases.

The following are excerpts from an exhaustive Internet search for information and answers.

1. The U.S. Navy's unsolved murder investigations totaled 200 dating to 1968. . . Then in 1995 they created "the only permanent federal cold case squad in the country." . . . This report quotes: "Cold cases 'require the most energy and resources,' 'We haven't had a case where somebody just called us with a tip.'

2. The shelves around him hold scores of black vinyl three-ring binders, each with a tale of murder unsolved-the woman raped and killed behind the Las Vegas Hilton in 1981, the prostitute murdered in her room in 1976, the Boston thug dumped in the desert back in 1969.

The names of the dead are typed neatly on the spines of the 300-plus binders, stark black print on white labels . . . Old murders are Hatch's beat; the 27-year police veteran opened the Las Vegas Police Department's cold case squad in July 1997. The binders date to 1943;

With the national murder rate plunging 28 percent since 1993, and with the proliferation of high tech crime-solving methods, cold-case investigators are appearing from Newark to New Orleans, from San Antonio to Seattle.

Hatch has closed dozens of cases since taking the job-"closed" meaning anything from a suspect's confession to his arrest to his death to (in one instance) his turning up in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Other cold-case squads nationwide have racked up similarly dramatic numbers . . .

In New York City the squad has cleared 280 cases in three years.

The Washington cold-case squad in its first five years closed 157 old homicides and several high profile attempted -murder cases.

Los Angeles squad formed two years ago has closed 35 cases in the last six months.

New Orleans [three years formed] has solved 113.

Massachusetts state CCS opened two years ago reopened 25 cases and have had 3 arrests to date.

In Newark, NJ, the CCS opened last September and scored an almost immediate hit: arresting a woman for her mother's 1971 slaying. Two other arrests quickly followed, with several more cases on the edge of resolution.

"Just as rewarding as putting the cuffs on a murderer is telling family members that you have the guy who did it." says Lt. Ray Ferrari, head of the New York Squad.

3. Due to the overwhelming increase in the murder rate, urban law enforcement agencies, such as the MPD, amassed unprecedented numbers of unsolved homicide cases. Fatigued homicide detectives, rushing from one new crime scent to another, could not conduct any meaningful follow-up investigations, and unsolved cases piled up.

. . . in 1965 the US murder clearance rate was 91%; by 1992 the rate had fallen to 65%. At the end of 1991 only 54 percent of the homicides that occurred in Washington that year had been solved. During the late 1980's and early 1990'as, hundreds of murders remained unsolved in the city.

The cold case concept provided a solid, effective way to address the overwhelming numbers of unsolved homicides in the nation's capital during the 1980's and early 1990's. A cold case squad could provide a viable option for jurisdictions similarly plagued by significant unsolved murder rates.

4. The Cold Case Homicide Procedure was adopted by the Spartanburg Public Safety Department Criminal Investigation Division in January 1997. Since it's initiation, 129 homicide cases, and their status have been reviewed. These cases date from November,19,1968 to present. Upon the introduction of the Cold Case Homicide Task Force there were 32 Homicide Cases still active, To date, 4 cases have been exceptionally cleared, 3 cases cleared by accidental death, 1 case ruled as a justified homicide. There have been 15 Cases cleared by arrest, which resulted in 25 suspects charged and 36 associated charges filed. Additionally, 2 cases are pending presentation to the S.C. State Grand Jury for indictment. Presently, 11 homicides cases are still active and under review.

Richard W. Cress [Father of Patrick R. Cress 8/30/69 - 4/30/83] DOVE [Dignity of Victims Everywhere]

CITATIONS:
Cress, Richard W.; Victims of Crime-Victims of Stress; 9th International Symposium on Victimology, August 1997
Federal Times, May 12, 1997, pages 58-59
Cold Case Investigations; The Associated Press by Larry McShane; Las Vegas (March 30)
Regini, Charles L.; The Cold Case Concept; Law Enforcement Bulletin-August 1997 Issue.
Cold Case Homicide Unit; Criminal Investigations Spartanburg Public Safety Criminal Investigation Division; South Carolina
San Antonio Police Department Homicide Unit.

A PRIMARY VICTIM is: as follows: Mother, Father, Brother, Sister Son Daughter Spouse Self.

A SECONDARY VICTIM is: Other Relative, Acquaintance, Coworker, Classmate, Other Friend or associate.
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propria



Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 630
Location: northern illinois

PostPosted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 4:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

>>> Fraught with double speak, governmental agencies are either unable or unwilling to share readily available information thus forcing us to make the most basic of assumptions. <<<


thanks for an interesting article, benn ...

and i can tell you from first hand experience that he's exactly right about trying to get any information out of governmental agencies ... i've learned that the hard way every single time i've tried to talk with the fbi, the dc police, the justice department, you name it, in my efforts to draw attention to chandra's case. as i've mentioned many times, we're not going to get so much as the time of day out of any law enforcement operation without a foia request, and i still think it would be well worth our time and effort to do that. however, i am frustrated and furious at my husband's warning that an 'active investigation' can even deter a foia request, so we should probably file the request without getting our hopes up too much for a response that's worth anything at all. so what we have here is a case growing colder and colder that can remain secret in every aspect as long as it's not actually solved, and it won't be solved or even thoroughly investigated unless somebody calls with a tip or confession ... how conveeeeeeeeeeennnnnnient!!


nanci
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benn



Joined: 19 Sep 2002
Posts: 2136
Location: Sacramento, CA

PostPosted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 6:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nanci, I am glad you replied here. I could not figure out what foia meant at first, so I was not going to reply to that. Freedom of Information Act, and that was what I was looking up a little this week. I could not figure out what the cost was going to be, and what else would have to be done.

Now the rest here is about writing to someone. I have already posted a little about this is in other messages.

I have the address of someone whom you could write or phone, and you might get some answers. Now I don't think he is going to do our work for us, but he might have some ideas. I wrote him just last Sunday if I remember right, and he answered on Monday. He works in a think tank now, so I guess they have time to answer their mail.

I will give his address, and then I will paste his homepage in here. Also, I will post his reply to me in a private message to you. I don't know if it is fair to post someone's message publically if they do take the time to reply. I guess it is all a matter of how one looks at it.

I was looking for a good cold case address to contact, but I did not find one yet. The Navy does some cold cases, but I did not find their exact address, I may just send them a general email.

benn

Joseph D. McNamara, Ph. D.

http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/BIOS/mcnamara.html

Address: Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-6010
Phone: (650) 725-5677
Email: mcnamara@hoover.stanford.edu

HOOVER INSTITUTION

Joseph D. McNamara Ph. D.

>>>Joseph D. McNamara was appointed a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, in 1991. He was chief of police for the city of San Jose, California, for fifteen years. He is recognized as an expert in criminal justice, police technology and management systems, crime prevention, and international drug control policies.

McNamara's career in law enforcement spans a thirty-five-year period. He began in Harlem as a beat patrolman for the New York City Police Department. He rose through the ranks and in midcareer was appointed a criminal justice fellow at Harvard Law School, focusing on criminal justice research methodology. Following this appointment he took a leave from police work and obtained a doctorate in public administration at Harvard. Returning to duty with the NYPD, he was appointed deputy inspector in charge of crime analysis for New York City.

In 1973 McNamara became police chief of Kansas City, Missouri, leading that department into groundbreaking research and innovative programs. In 1976 McNamara was appointed police chief for the city of San Jose, where he remained until his retirement in 1991. During his tenure, San Jose (the third-largest city in California and the eleventh largest in the United States) became the safest city in the country, despite having the fewest police per capita. The San Jose police became a model for innovation, community relations, utilization of technology, and productivity. The department's advanced training and computerization programs have been duplicated throughout the world.

McNamara has served as lecturer and adjunct professor at five different colleges and has lectured at many of the nation's top universities, including Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley. In 1980, he was appointed by the U. S. attorney general to the advisory board of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

He has been a commentator for National Public Broadcasting radio and has appeared on Meet the Press, Good Morning America, the Today Show, CBS Morning News, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Crossfire, Nightline, Oprah, Donahue, Larry King Live, Sixty Minutes, and other programs.

He has been a consultant for the United States Department of Justice, State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and some of the nation's largest corporations. Over the past decade, McNamara has organized four conferences at the Hoover Institution, attended by police chiefs and command officers, focusing on U. S. drug control policies.

McNamara has written five books, including three national best-selling detective novels and a respected crime prevention text. He has published articles in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Kansas City Star, Newsday, Harper's, Cosmopolitan, National Review, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and other publications. In addition, McNamara is sought as a lecturer throughout the country.<<<

benn
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propria



Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 630
Location: northern illinois

PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2003 3:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

thanks for the contact information, benn ... i'll see what i can do about getting in touch with him by phone.

nanci
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benn



Joined: 19 Sep 2002
Posts: 2136
Location: Sacramento, CA

PostPosted: Mon Nov 24, 2003 10:21 am    Post subject: Deep discussions of cold cases. Reply with quote

Helllo this is a site for anyone who wants to look at cold cases. I put Chandra's name in there because I did not see it.

http://boards.aetv.com/forum.jsp?forum=8

The name is sort of deceptive because the site also has something to do with television. I guess I am just a little slow in figuring it out.

One reply I read was by a policeman.

benn
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benn



Joined: 19 Sep 2002
Posts: 2136
Location: Sacramento, CA

PostPosted: Wed Jul 07, 2004 1:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is an orld article on cold cases that might have some useful infomation. It has given me a few ideas.

benn
>>>>>>>>

CNN.com

Solving the cold case: Time, ingenuity and DNA can help

By Christina Lewis
Court TV
Tuesday, December 17, 2002 Posted: 10:11 AM EST (1511 GMT)
Story Tools


(Court TV) -- In March 1985, 30-year-old James Larkins was found shot to death in his car. Miami-Dade detectives knew only that Larkins was involved in selling cocaine and that no one wanted to talk. The case quickly grew cold.

It took 15 years -- and the testimony of two men who agreed to name the killers in exchange for lighter sentences in unrelated cases -- to solve the murder.

Sometimes the passage of time is all a cold case -- one that has gone unsolved for years -- needs to generate heat.

"Over time people's relationships with each other change," says Detective Gary Smith, supervisor of the Miami-Dade Cold Case Squad. "Friends are no longer friends. People divorce. They might find religion. So those people who didn't give information before might now be willing."

Although it seems like the cops just got a random break in the Larkins case, the case is a typical of how detectives can exploit the passage of time to solve open cases, says Smith, whose unit was one of the first in the nation established to investigate cold cases. To uncover new leads, cold case detectives -- typically some of the most experienced in their field -- will re-interview old witnesses and family members hoping they may provide new information.

"We find time has been an ally," says Sergeant Bill Tanton, a 23-year veteran of the Sacramento Police Department and a consultant for the California Cold Case Investigation Course, a training program that specializes in solving open cases. "Particularly in gang-related cases a lot of these young kids have changed their minds and grown-up and realized what they were involved in."

It took nearly four decades for witnesses to come forward in the infamous Schuessler-Peterson murders in Chicago. The naked, bruised, strangled bodies of three boys were found piled on top of one another in a forest preserve in 1955.

The case remained one of the city's great unsolved crimes, until in 1993, police found four men who admitted that a man named Kenneth Hansen had confessed to the murders.

The men had not come forward earlier, they said, because three of them had had a sexual relationship with Hansen and at least one said he feared the social stigma if the relationship became public. One of the men said he had been molested by him.

Over the years, all four men ended up in prison and agreed to talk after prosecutors offered them deals to testify against Hansen.

The passing of time has helped cold case investigators in another way. Over the years advances in forensic science such as fingerprint, ballistics, and especially DNA testing have allowed for many cases to be solved just by re-examining the old evidence.

"DNA is so sophisticated now, just in the last few years we've been able to move from saying its one in 10,000 people to this is the only person on the face of the earth that will have this DNA profile." explains Sharon Pagaling Hagan, the only recognized criminal investigative profiler for the state of California. "Obviously it changes everything."

A computerized national database called CODIS that stores over a million DNA profiles of known felons can allow detectives to match their unidentified sample with a known criminal. This technology is particularly useful in cases of sexual assault.

Six-year-old Lisa Marie Bonham went missing while visiting relatives in Reno in 1977. Twenty-three years later detectives asked for her recovered clothing to be retested. Scientists found previously undetectable DNA evidence and matched it with that of Stephen Smith, a convicted felon.

Through CODIS, investigators can positively identify their suspect in as little as a few hours. The CODIS system can also help investigators more easily link a series of crimes to one person as was the case of the recent Long Beach rapist. In November, California police linked Mark Wayne Rathbun to 13 sexual assaults using DNA evidence that is so compelling even the suspect's mother believes he did it.

Although improper storage such as using plastic bags rather than paper or exposing the evidence to too much humidity or heat can degrade DNA, Hagan says that current technology can even recover complete profiles from poorly stored evidence, the kind usually available in very old cases.

"If somebody's hands are sweating and they touch something, we can recover their DNA from that," she says.

Advances in DNA technology have allowed investigators to solve cases by retesting evidence, but some cases get cracked through innovation or by detectives thinking outside the box.

Sergeant Jorge Duran, supervisor of the San Diego cold case unit, has used the media to close old cases. He recalls the case of Gilberto Araiza, who, along with an accomplice, fatally stabbed a city shuttle bus driver in 1983.

When his accomplice ratted him out, Araiza fled to Mexico where he remained in hiding until 2000 when Duran got a Latin American television program similar to "America's Most Wanted," called "Primer Impacto," to run a segment on him. Within days they received a call from Mexico. Araiza is now serving life without parole.

And then there are some cold cases that, once reexamined, turn out not to be murders at all.

In an isolated area of California, Tanton recalls, a woman was found with part of her face lying under some bushes. The murder weapon, a handgun, was eight or nine feet away. The assailant, police surmised, shot her gruesomely in the face, then dropped the gun as he or she fled the scene. But what seemed particularly odd was that the handgun didn't seem powerful enough to have blasted part of her so far away. The answer it turned out was simple: Animals had altered the crime scene. The woman had shot herself.

And, of course, there is the occasional lucky break. Recently, Vallejo, California, authorities were able to recover a 6-year-old boy kidnapped when he was just 2 weeks old after his mother and grandmother were killed in a fire. Police received an anonymous tip leading them directly to the suspect. The boy will be reunited with his true family soon.

Cold case investigators say they work on the open cases out of a sense of obligation to the victims and their families.

"On some occasions it does happen where the investigator gets to know a lot about the victim by interviewing their friends and family..." says Duran. "And [he] gets a sense of wanting to bring this to a close because this person didn't deserve this."
>>>>>
>>>>>
benn

Cold cases in California. aha...The coldness of the Chandra Levy case may take some of the politics out of the case, making it just another murder case.

I will reprint one paragraph here. I wonder how good a DNA job the DC police did on Chandra Levy's clothing. The police and FBI do not seem to have done a lot of things right, maybe there is DNA evidence on Chandra's clothing.

>>>>Six-year-old Lisa Marie Bonham went missing while visiting relatives in Reno in 1977. Twenty-three years later detectives asked for her recovered clothing to be retested. Scientists found previously undetectable DNA evidence and matched it with that of Stephen Smith, a convicted felon.<<<

All right this seems like a good tip, but who would we give it to? The DC police? I don't think so.

Here is another paragraph from the above cold case article that I will repeat down here.
>>>>

>>"We find time has been an ally," says Sergeant Bill Tanton, a 23-year veteran of the Sacramento Police Department and a consultant for the California Cold Case Investigation Course, a training program that specializes in solving open cases. "Particularly in gang-related cases a lot of these young kids have changed their minds and grown-up and realized what they were involved in."<<

benn
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